The Georgia Coastal Ecosystems (GCE) Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) program, which was established in 2000 to understand estuaries (places where salt water from the ocean mixes with fresh water from the land) and their adjacent coastal wetlands (i.e., marshes and tidal forests) and how they respond to long-term change. The GCE LTER researchers evaluate how environmental conditions (e.g., sea level, temperature, storms and hurricanes) and human activities (e.g., land use) affect the properties of estuaries (e.g., salinity, flooding patterns), and how that in turn affects wetlands and their ability to provide food and refuge for fish, shellfish and birds, to protect the shoreline from storms, to help to keep the water clean, and to store carbon, all of which have significant implications for the US economy. Many of the changes that are occurring are affecting not just average conditions, but also their fluctuations and extremes (e.g., variability). For example, not only has the average high tide level increased over the past decade, but the number of extreme flooding events has also increased, both of which have the potential to lead to wetland loss through drowning. During this award, the research team will conduct studies to systematically evaluate 1) whether we can improve our predictions of ecological responses by considering variability in environmental conditions, and 2) the use of variability as an early indicator of underlying environmental stress. The findings fr